| |
Young Biologist's Genetics Research Gets Boost From Major NSF Grant
Karen Hales
|
3/26/2002
Contact: Bill Giduz 704/894-2244 or bigiduz@davidson.edu
by John Syme ' 85
Assistant Biology Professor Karen G. Hales has won the largest research grant ever awarded to a single Davidson College faculty member. She will use the five-year, $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to expand and enhance her genetics research.
The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program offers the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious awards for new faculty members. The CAREER program recognizes and supports the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who are most likely to become academic leaders. CAREER awardees are selected on the basis of creative career-development plans that effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their institution.
“In my laboratory we perform genetic analysis with the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to explore the molecular mechanisms by which mitochondria are moved and shaped in cells,” explained Hales. “Mitochondria are the organelles often referred to as the ‘powerhouses of the cell,’ since they are the sites where energy from food is stored in ATP. In many cell types with unusual energy needs, mitochondria move in a regulated way to be close to energy-requiring structures such as flagella.”
Junior Laura Quillian is a student in Hales' lab.
|
Sperm cells are a prime example of the importance of such mitochondrial moving and shaping, said Hales, whose doctoral thesis at Stanford University was “Genetic control of mitochondrial morphogenesis during Drosophila spermatogenesis.” Much remains to be learned about how the shaping of mitochondria increases the efficiency with which ATP is distributed within sperm cells and other specialized cell types, said Hales.
Biology department chair Verna Case said Hales herself is another example of a particularly strong department in both research and teaching.
“We have hired within past four years six exceptional biology professors,” Case said. “Karen Hales hit the ground running, and got her research lab up and running. Her research is excellent. She is just an incredibly strong young member of our department. Our other faculty members are going great guns bringing in research money, too, both nationally and regionally.”
Hales, in only her second year at Davidson, wins kudos from students, too.
“She has great communications skills,” said Sean Burke ’02, a member of Hales’ lab. “She can really explain scientific literature in a way that I can understand it ... and if a few days go by when I don’t write much in my lab notebook, even her body language can get a message across!”
Travel to scientific conferences is another big plus, said Burke, and one that is particularly rare for undergraduates. Some of Hales’ NSF grant money will go toward conference travel.
“You learn more about science than just what you are doing,” said Burke. “Yours may be the first eyes besides the researchers’ to see emerging scientific conclusions.”
 |
Senior Sean Burke assists with Hales' research in genetics.
|
The federal grant money will permit Hales to hire a lab technician, freeing her and her students from lab maintenance responsibilities and allowing them to spend more time on actual experiments throughout the year, including summer. The cost of equipment, materials and supplies for the construction of transgenic flies in her own lab is also in Hales' winning grant proposal. Transgenic flies have exogenously added DNA that has been specially designed to allow study of the function of particular genes.
In her short time thus far at Davidson, Hales has focused on life outside the lab, too, advising the Biosociety and helping organize a Charles Darwin birthday party for the department. Further afield, she is a triathlete and orienteer, and her website includes links to many varied interests, ranging from “WWII Codes and Ciphers” and “The National Steinbeck Center” to her love of tea and eclectic tastes in music and art.
Hales, a Phi Beta Kappa Swarthmore alumna, received her Ph.D. in 1997 from Stanford, under thesis advisor Margaret T. Fuller, with whom she is collaborating on her current research. Hales has won many awards and fellowships since her own undergraduate days, including fellowships from the National Institutes of Health and from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She was a biology instructor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the summers of 1999 and 2000. She came to Davidson in August, 2000.
Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,600 students. Since its establishment in 1837, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently ranked in the top ten liberal arts colleges in the country by U.S. News and World Report magazine. Davidson is engaged in "Let Learning Be Cherished," a $250 million campaign in support of student financial assistance, academic resources, and community life.
|
|
